


Bleeding Lips

by rainbowflavouredfabulous



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Captain America: Civil War, Dreams, M/M, Pietro Maximoff Lives, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-24 15:25:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4924879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowflavouredfabulous/pseuds/rainbowflavouredfabulous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wanda stood up and walked past Bucky, a red haze lingering by her fingertips. "I can help you. If you want."</p><p>"No offence but I've had enough people mess with my head for one lifetime."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bleeding Lips

**Author's Note:**

> #PietroLives. Shoutout to my beta Soph for actually making this fic make sense. Title from [Bloody Lip](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mwIy90EWljA) by Deptford Goth

Bucky didn't quite know where he was, only that they were somewhere in Europe and all of them were exhausted. Clint had somehow conjured up a safe house on the outskirts of some generic city, and their ragtag group of exiles were limping to the safety of the small and dusty apartment. The majority of them collapsed on the nearest flat surface when they got there and fell asleep even before taking their boots off. 

But Bucky still had nightmares, frequent and still terrifying, even after two years simultaneously on the run and in hiding, excavating the remains of his damaged memories and trying to find himself, the real him, once again. Himself was a difficult person to figure out indeed; the gap toothed boy once known as Bucky, the sergeant addressed as James Buchanan Barnes, the tortured assassin rumoured to be the Winter Soldier. Which one was he now? The main thing he knew was that sometimes when he wrenches his mind from the grips of yet another nightmare, he can still vaguely feel jolts of agony, from those times that remain, etched in his mind.

Tonight was just another one of those nights and Bucky knew he wouldn't be able to get back asleep. Better just to stay up all night and try to forget the visions his brain oh so helpfully offered him on a rusty silver platter. He could hear both Steve and Pietro's heavy, fatigued breathing from the only bedroom in the apartment, the two men having been hustled into the bedroom nearly unconscious on their feet. Steve always told Bucky to wake him up if he needed him but since they had to go on the run, Steve hadn't slept properly in nearly 72 hours. It had been a long time since Bucky had seen him not actually sleep deprived and stressed.

Bucky went to the kitchen in the hope of running water and instead found Wanda sitting on the counter, idly playing with magic whilst a radio was playing softly in the background.

“Thirsty, Barnes?”

"You're still up," he stated mechanically, still having to get used to speaking in more than clipped reports to his handlers, the Brooklyn twang slowly but surely returning.

"Too many thoughts in this place," Wanda's Slavic tinged lilt reminded him of missions in the old Eastern bloc, of fur coats and fresh snow splattered with still warm blood. "Especially yours."

"Get the fuck outta my head," Bucky growled, the plates of his metal arm whirring and calibrating for defence.

"I don't mean to," Wanda protested quickly, knowing she had to keep her voice down. "But some thoughts are louder than others. And yours seem to scream in pain."

Bucky scoffed. "Yeah well, when you've had Nazis and Russian scientists fuck with your mind an' torture you until you're nearly dead, you tend to be in pain all the time."

Wanda stood up and walked past him, a red haze lingering by her fingertips. "I can help you. If you want."

"No offence but I've had enough people mess with my head for one lifetime."

Wanda glanced at him briefly before sitting down on the only free sofa. "It won't hurt. It'll just allow you to dream without anything being painful. It helps." Bucky hesitated, still standing at the kitchen counter, weighing up the absolute need for sleep against the possibility of someone in his head.

"I helped Steve once. After Sovokia. He said he knew you were somewhere out there. And he kept remembering you, in his dreams. He said he just wanted to dream peacefully for once since the war. So I made him dream of you. Before the war. I never saw him so happy."

Bucky uncertainly bit his bottom lip for a moment, but relaxed at the thought of Steve. Steve thought it was safe. He trusted Steve. 

"Promise you won't do anything bad?"

"On my brother's life."

Pietro. Pietro was everything to Wanda; this promise was her ultimate pledge. Bucky had heard about what had happened in Sovokia. How Wanda ultimately gained the Avengers their victory over Ultron. How she was faithful to the Avengers and stayed back to defeat Ultron. How she and her brother are inseparable. To save Clint, Pietro got shot, and they, in return, saved Pietro’s life. Wanda has been grateful ever since. She can’t lose him again.

“You wanted a drink.” She offered him a glass of water. He sipped cautiously and paced, still slightly hesitant to let her mute his pain and mess with his head for one night’s rest before inhaling heavily, and sitting next to Wanda, slowly lowering his head onto her shoulder. 

He felt her hand move slowly and in the corner of his eye, and on seeing the red mist, indicating her infinite power, his eyes felt oh-so heavy, yawning loudly before feeling his eyes droop lower and lower. 

-

Army training had never quite left Steve and even whilst on the run, he still woke up with the sun, quickly searching the apartment for any changes. It was only as he entered the living room and saw red glowing by the sofa, Bucky's overgrown hair spread across Wanda's lap on the couch.

"Guess he couldn't sleep, huh?"

"He's like you. Too many thoughts for one head, too much suffering for one person." Wanda murmured, hands moving slowly around Bucky's head. 

Steve crouched down in front of the sofa and gently rested his hand on Bucky's head.

"He's dreaming of you, sometime before the war, you're much smaller than now.” She paused for a moment, wondering if this would infringe upon Bucky's privacy, “He made me promise not to hurt him; very wary about what I can do, and what harm others can inflict. He only agreed once I mentioned I did it with you. Barnes trusts you. Seems like you're the one thing that hasn't hurt him."

"I doubt that I haven't hurt him. It's just fuckin' awful that worse things have happened to him since."

Bucky's lips twitched in the semblance of a smile before resting in a slight quirk that Steve had missed since 1941.

"I just hope nothing ever hurts him again."

**Author's Note:**

> Outtake, courtesy of Soph
> 
> (As his mind was numbing to unconsciousness, Bucky heard a few final sentences.
> 
> “Oh shit,” the Slavic drawl said, “I should have sat him on the sofa  
> properly before putting him asleep. He’s going to be fucking heavy to  
> move.”)
> 
> I'm on [Tumblr!](lostlibraryofalex.tumblr.com)


End file.
